Fontana & Barrett Face the Fans, 1972
In our day and age opportunities to interact with behind the scenes people from movies and TV shows are relatively plentiful, but in the era before email, texts, mobile phones and social media, the opportunity to ask questions of writers and actors were few and far between.
On January 22nd, 1972 the doors were thrown open to direct interaction between thousands of Star Trek’s fans and some of its makers at the first Star Trek Lives! convention—the first major Trek con—held in New York City on January 21, 22, and 23, 1972, only two and a half years after the show’s final curtain on NBC.
The interaction was mostly one-way at first, with Oscar Katz and Gene Roddenberry each giving prepared talks but these were followed by a Q&A session with Star Trek writer and Story Editor Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana, who was joined at the last minute by Majel “Number One/Christine Chapel” Barrett (aka Majel Roddenberry).
The Great Bird of the Galaxy speaks. We believe that’s Majel seated alongside the lectern.[1]
As with our articles Oscar Where Are You? and 1972 Gives Us the Bird, thanks to FACT TREK fast friend Bill Kobylak we have a 40 minute recoding of arguably that first Q&A at the Star Trek Lives! con, only two and a half years after the show’s final curtain on NBC.
Introduced by Issac Asimov, here are Fontana and Barrett answering fan questions about everything from unintentional plagiarism to the show’s even-then apparent chauvinism.
FACT TREK : The poor quality of the source audio and excessive background noise has made this a tough recording to transcribe, and there are omissions where we were unsure what was being said. Therefore this transcript has been more heavily edited than previously for clarity.
STAR TREK LIVES! Convention
Statler-Hilton Hotel, New York City, Saturday, January 22, 1972, 4 p.m.
DOROTHY C. FONTANA QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION
Unknown Speaker: For those of you who did not hear the first announcement, there’s well over 2,000, I believe this is the largest science fiction convention ever held.
[Audience applause.]
FACT TREK : Because this is an off-the cuff session and not a prepared speech, for this transcript we’ll be taking a different approach, including in-line notes, clarifications and corrections.Such notes will appear in this format to differentiate it from the transcript proper.
Isaac Asimov: Our next two guests have had the unique opportunity to experience Star Trek from two unique points of view. On your left is Ms. Dorothy Fontana, who for two years held a position as script consultant. In this capacity, it was her job to coordinate character personalities, standardize the Star Trek storyline to make Star Trek as real to the viewer as reading pages from the Captain’s Log. Romulan history, Enterprise technology, even Mr. Spock’s parents were part of her responsibility to have them conform to the Star Trek format. In addition, she wrote the episode[s] “This Side of Paradise” and “Journey To Babel.”
[Audience applause.]
FACT TREK : Dorothy Fontana's first day as script consultant was December 19, 1966 (her first credit was for "This Side of Paradise") and her last day was sometime in December of 1967 or January of 1968 (her last credit was for "Assignment: Earth"). Although she had been with the series from the beginning and contributed stories and scripts before and after her tenure on staff, she was in the role of Script Consultant for about a year, not two.
Isaac Asimov: On your right is Majel Barrett, who for three years played Dr. McCoy’s assistant, Nurse Christian—Christine Chapel.
[Interrupted by audience laughter.]
Isaac Asimov: Majel stars in the pilot in the role of the stoic Number One, a character similar in personality to Mr. Spock. She has also appeared in numerous movies and television shows. Here now to answer all your questions about everything you always wanted to know about Star Trek...
FACT TREK : Majel Barrett’s resume at the time of production on Star Trek's first pilot (late 1964) listed eight movie roles and eighteen television appearances. Most of these are now listed on IMDb, but as of this writing, there are five television credits that are missing. These include parts on The Texan (1958–60), The Asphalt Jungle (1961), Outlaws (1960–62), and Eleventh Hour (1962–64). A fifth credit on her resume is for a television series called Bringing Up Baby, but we believe this is a typo for Bringing Up Buddy (1960–61). We'd love to track down these missing credits if one of our reader knows more about them.
Majel Barrett: I can’t even anticipate this.
Isaac Asimov: People will come up and speak into this microphone as they’re chosen.
Majel Barrett: No! (Laughs)
Isaac Asimov: No?
Majel Barrett: Of course, of course.
Audience Member #1: Members of the cast were quite prone towards practical jokes on the set, especially Shatner, I’m told. Can you tell us some of the more known episodes?
Majel Barrett: Most of them are untellable. I mean—
[Interrupted by audience laughter.]
Majel Barrett: As Gene would say, they’re all X-rated. I’m trying to give it to you. Outside of the bicycle thing with Leonard, we did that. I think one thing that was left out of that story was after they put it up, because he was so irritated that his bicycle kept on disappearing. The more he fought it, the worse it got. Eventually, after it was up on top of the ceiling, then he put it in the back of his car, in his trunk, and locked the car. What the crew did was go out and lift it up on a dolly and take the whole car off. So, he finally decided there was no sense in that and he just left it there and of course nobody bothered him from there on in. I don’t—Dorothy, do you know of any others that were—
Dorothy Fontana: Not on the set, no.
Majel Barrett: I’m sorry, that’s about the best I can do off-hand. If we think of something later on, we’ll tell you, okay?
Isaac Asimov: Back there, just come up. If you have a question, just come up, stand in line, [and] talk into the microphone.
Majel Barrett: Will you take this thing please? (Laughs) It makes me nervous.
Audience Member #2: Ms. Fontana, I’d like to wish you luck on The Sixth Sense.
Dorothy Fontana: Don’t. I’m already off The Sixth Sense and so is Harlan Ellison.
Audience Member #2: On Les Crane’s show about four years ago, Harlan Ellison said it was a vile occurrence that so many kids were wasting their time on Star Trek, who should have been out ending the Vietnam War and obtaining peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Do you think that, uh... [2]
Dorothy Fontana: Sounds like Harlan.
Audience Member #2: Do you think that this whole convention is, as one of my friends described it, 3,500 kids flogging a dead horse?
Dorothy Fontana: No, I don’t think so. I think the interest that has been generated over the past three years, actually, the letter response, the calls and letters to the network have kept them aware that Star Trek really never died. The tremendous response to the syndicated versions of the show, overseas syndication, has made them remember that Star Trek never left, really. And now, with so many of you here, NBC refused to send representatives, I understand, but the other networks did. I have a hunch that if NBC would really like to get rid of this dirty, old show that CBS or ABC would grab it.
Dorothy Fontana, c1967.
Isaac Asimov: If you have a question, don’t raise your hand, just come up to the microphone and stand in line if there’s somebody ahead of you.
Audience Member #3: This is for D.C. Fontana. In “Balance of Terror,” one of the main points was a phaser room, but the ship was firing photon torpedoes. I’ve always wondered, why? Was it just a technical error, or...?
Majel Barrett: (Whispering) What’s a photon torpedo?
Dorothy Fontana: At that time, that was approximately the fifth show we did, or sixth, and we were still feeling our way. You’ll find a number of incongruities and contradictions in those early shows because we were still finding our way. We didn’t use the photon torpedoes too much afterward. We came to use the phasers a lot. The only way I can explain it is that this is one of those things that happened when we still didn’t really know who we were yet, and it hadn’t solidified into the rules that were later laid down.
FACT TREK : In fact, the script for "Balance of Terror" (the 9th produced, 14th aired episode) calls for phaser "blips", and that's what the effects portray. Photon torpedoes came later with "Arena" (the 19th produced, 18th aired episode).[3]
Audience Member #4: I’d like to know which episodes you liked doing the best?
Dorothy Fontana: Majel?
Majel Barrett: Gee, I would say “The Cage,” it would have to be, because it was the original pilot, and it was the thing that really gave us the incentive to go ahead. It was what sold the idea of Star Trek.
Audience Member #4: Ms. Fontana, would you care to answer the last question, too?
Dorothy Fontana: My two favorites of my own shows are “This Side of Paradise” and “Journey To Babel.” Mainly because they told me I couldn’t do either one of those.
Audience Member 5: Ms. Fontana, it’s written a lot about in the fanzines. What’s the name of Dr. McCoy’s ex-wife?
Dorothy Fontana: We never named her. She never existed in print. We hadn’t gotten around to her yet.
Audience Member 6: I don’t know how many people remember this, but in the episode “The Conscience of The King,” and also in “The Changeling,” Lt. Uhura sang a song called “Beyond Antares.” Now, I’ve been trying every way to get the words to that song. In fact, I have a tape at home of her singing that song, but I can’t possibly decipher it, really. I basically have them, but do you think maybe...do you know them off hand or can you tell me where to get them?
Dorothy Fontana: Ruth Berman has put out The Star Trek Songbook. It has all the music, all the lyrics, even traditional songs like “Goodnight, [Sweetheart]” and so on that were used in Harlan’s script. Every scrap of music that was used on the show that could be identified and written down is in the Songbook and you can get it for a measly fifty cents if you write to Ruth. If you don’t have it, somebody around here must have her address. It’s in Minneapolis.[4]
Majel Barrett: Milwaukee.
Dorothy Fontana: No, it’s Minneapolis.
Majel Barrett: Oh, Minneapolis. I thought it was Milwaukee. Oh, Edgewater Drive.
Dorothy Fontana: Yeah, right.
Audience Member #7: What does “NCC” on the ship mean?
Dorothy Fontana: I believe that’s a pilot, plane designation. Gene would know this because he came up with the number. It’s not a military number, as you well know. I believe the NCC designation is, actually, for private planes.
FACT TREK : Matt Jefferies addressed this several times. See End Notes [5]
Audience Member #7: Then who owns the Enterprise?
Majel Barrett: Gene.
Audience Member 8: As script consultant, I heard that you were notorious for editing some scripts. And I was just wondering [unintelligible] editing scripts or rewriting them?
Dorothy Fontana: A contradiction. I did the job that I was asked to do, I often did not like doing the rewrites I had to do, but under my contract, I must.
Audience Member 8: I heard that in some cases what was originally written and what got on the air was completely different. I was wondering, for the episodes you wrote, [were] they edited as much?
Dorothy Fontana: On occasion, yes. “Charlie X,” “Friday’s Child,” [and] “The Enterprise Incident” all were rewritten and were not, if you looked at my first drafts, the same.
Audience Member #9: Ms. Fontana, I’d like to ask you, seeing some of the scripts that you wrote on the television, I saw elements of favorite stories of mine written by Zenna Henderson about “The People.” I was wondering, had you read them?
Dorothy Fontana: I hadn’t read “The People” until this year. I read one story once long ago, but the entire collection I had not read until earlier this year.[6]
Audience Member #10: I have two questions. Number one, why [do] most of the female guest stars' names end in “A?” Names like Rayna, Deela, Shahna, Mara, Kara, [unintelligible], cottontail people.
Dorothy Fontana: I worry about cottontail deer. That’s just one of those things that happens, I guess. At one point, [the] research department discovered that Captain Kirk’s old girlfriends were all blonde, about the same age, built the same, and had the same way of speaking, and that was because of Gene Coon, who happened to like that type of gal.
Audience Member #10: My next question is why does Bill Shatner get all the girls?
Dorothy Fontana: Why not? Let’s face it, he was the star and also it was a little easier to write things for him.
Audience Member #10: [Unintelligible] that’s his character, right]?
Dorothy Fontana: Yeah, but for Mr. Spock it was very hard to come up with a legitimate love interest for him. You had to create special circumstances. For Dr. McCoy you had to go, generally, with a different kind of woman. And the writers weren’t too interested in writing love stories for Dr. McCoy.
Audience Member #10: In one story, I have him getting married to Christine.
Dorothy Fontana: Sorry. Couldn’t do that [unintelligible].
Audience Member #11: This is for Ms. Fontana. On all planets that the crew members go down to, everybody seems to speak English. I realize, even on Earth, where everybody’s human there are hundreds of different languages. I realize you can’t have one person on the Enterprise knowing all these kind of foreign languages, which it would speak, but wouldn’t it be more realistic to have some sort kind of extension of the ship’s computer, which would beam radio messages up there to translate it for them.
Dorothy Fontana: We had what was called the universal translator. Also, at one time there was an indication that the communicator also worked as a translator. And the other added drawback to this is the very practical one, which Majel can tell you, is actors’ sound very foolish trying to speak languages that do not exist. I mean that. It’s gobbledygook, it’s nonsense, and then you always have to have somebody say, “Well, what he said was...” and you do the line again. To avoid all this, we just did it straight and let you fill it in with your imagination.
Audience Member #12: Ms. Fontana, Whose idea was it to adapt Fredric Brown’s previously published story “Arena” to Star Trek. Or was this the case of unconscious plagiarism, to which Harlan Ellison made veiled reference to in Dangerous Visions?
FACT TREK : The Harlan Ellison passage in question can be read in End Notes of this article. [7]
Dorothy Fontana: What happened was—and this is the truth—Gene Coon wrote the story. When it was brought to his attention that it was very much like “Arena,” he really died because in thinking that he had written the story, he had unconsciously pulled it up. Gene is an honorable and decent man and has no scores against his name ever in a long career in writing. We immediately notified Mr. Brown, asked him if we could use it, and we would give him credit and the $700 pay. He had no objections at all. He was properly credited, properly paid, and everybody was happy. As soon as we found out that there was a similarity in any area, we do notify the original writer. In fact, Mr. Heinlein was notified of his “tribbles” and he never decided to answer or enter a plea, so we went ahead with it. But Gerrold’s tribbles are very much like flat cats.
FACT TREK : This account does not quite align with the historical record. See End Notes. [8]
Majel Barrett: No, Gene brought it to...[comment is whispered and trails off]
Audience Member #13: I was wondering, who developed Spock’s parents? Who was responsible for getting them into believable characters? Was it you?
Dorothy Fontana: Me.
Audience Member #13: And how did you get them? How did you work backwards to develop [them]?
Dorothy Fontana: I think the first reference to their existence came in—
Audience Member #13: In “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
Dorothy Fontana: No, not “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” really, but “This Side of Paradise.” At that time, we really hadn’t thought about their being alive, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and [I] came up with the story for “Journey To Babel.” It began, really, with the teaser — “Captain Kirk, these are my parents” — and went on from there.
FACT TREK : She's right. An "ancestor” of Spock's is mentioned in "Where No Man Has Gone Before," but there were other references. See End Notes. [9]
Audience Member #14: I heard that the real reason in “The Enterprise Incident” [that] the Romulan ship, they changed to the Klingon ship, was because the prop man dropped it on the way to get it.
Dorothy Fontana: The original Romulan ship was not very good, that appeared in “Balance of Terror.” We wound up using a totally new design, the Klingon ships, and made it sort of an agreement between them. They had become allies, as Russia and Red China, for instance, and were using and exchanging equipment. It was a production problem. Miniatures are extremely expensive to build and the Romulan ship we had was not a good one and no one was ever satisfied with it.
FACT TREK : The fate of the original Romulan ship model is unknown and debateable. See End Notes. [10]
Audience Member #15: Ms. Fontana, in the end of “The Immunity Syndrome,” in the scenes when they’re showing the credits, and also in one of the scenes from the bloopers last night, there’s a scene in sickbay with an alien with a latex mask over his head. Can you please tell me, what show—it wasn’t from any shows that had ever been on, what’s the story behind it?
Dorothy Fontana: That was a stand-in—Bill, wasn’t it?
Majel Barrett: I think so.
Dorothy Fontana: It was a stand-in and an extra, Bill Blackburn. You occasionally saw him as an extra. This was a make-up test that was done for one of the shows. I can’t recall which one it was. It might have been the aging one, “The Deadly Years.” And it was a sort of a base make-up for that. They were running tests on it to see what it looked like on film before we actually went in to doing three actors with all this make-up.
Audience Member #15: But it wasn’t from an episode that was—?
Dorothy Fontana: No, it was never from an episode.
FACT TREK : The blooper in question is of Bill Blackburn tearing off the make-up used when he played Henoch’s android body in “Return To Tomorrow.” A frame of this appeared as one of the stills for the end credits of “By Any Other Name.” An image of Blackburn facing the camera in the fully intact makeup can be seen in the end credits of "The Immunity Sydrome."
Audience Member #16: There’s three things I’d like to ask you. First, in “Journey to Babel,” there was that guy who looked like his eye sockets had been pushed back two inches. Now was that supposed to be done, or was that just Fred Phillips?
Dorothy Fontana: Fred is very talented, as you can see from his make-up. The character is described pretty thoroughly in the front of that script. There was a separate page that was costume and make-up notes. And I did describe a hairy, almost bear-like head with a pig snout and this is the way it turned out. I liked it very much, I thought they looked very different.
Fontana’s original description of the alien races from a lead sheet in her script for “Journey to Babel”. [11]
Audience Member #16: I heard that “The Man Trap” was not the first one filmed but it was the first one aired. Which episode was the first one filmed?
Dorothy Fontana: It was one you might have seen last night, “The Corbomite Maneuver.”
Audience Member #16: Oh, one more thing. In one of the episodes, Kirk says, “Go to the devil.” Now, if Star Trek was still on, would you have allowed him to say, “Go to hell”?
Dorothy Fontana: It wasn’t up to us, it was up to the censorship, which is called Program Standards, it depends. If you tell someone to go to hell, they usually said “No, you may not do that because that is, in context, it is swearing. If you said that someone had been in hell in suffering, then you could say it. It was a different context. And they’re still fairly hard line on that.
Audience Member #17: How did you get away with “Let’s get the Hell out of here” at the end of “The City on the Edge of Forever”?
Dorothy Fontana: Gene fought for it.
Audience Member #18: I realize that “The Enterprise Incident” is one of those episodes that you wrote, which did not come out as you originally wrote it, however this question has divided me for a long time. What was the name of the Romulan Commander, which she whispered into Spock’s ear?
Dorothy Fontana: You can’t pronounce it.
Audience Member #19: I’d like to know if you can pronounce Jim’s middle name?
Dorothy Fontana: Jim Kirk?
Audience Member #19: Yeah.
Dorothy Fontana: Tiberius.
[Huge audience laughter.]
FACT TREK : While David Gerrold has tried to stake claim for Kirk’s middle name, it does not hold up historical scrutiny. See End Notes. [12]
Audience Member #20: What was Spock’s first name?
Dorothy Fontana: You can’t pronounce that, either.
Audience Member #21: I have two questions. First of all, whatever happened to Janice Rand? How do you explain that she left the show?
Dorothy Fontana: Do you want to answer that, Majel?
Majel Barett: No, I don’t really know.
Dorothy Fontana: The thing of it was that the deal was originally made, as many actors have, that she was to do so many out of 13 episodes, say 10 out of 13. That was all that her original contract required.[13]
Now Grace Lee Whitney is considered to be an actress of some professional stature, therefore we paid her quite a bit of money.[14] However we weren’t giving her enough work and we felt that it was a disservice to the actress because the Yeoman is kind of an extra leg, almost. They’re around to gopher, to run, fetch, and carry, and we felt that we were really wasting a pretty good actress in a [unintelligible] job.
FACT TREK : Fontana may not have known the exact circumstances of Whitney's exit from the show and is probably repeating "the party line" from Roddenberry. Whitney's own account is rather more harrowing.[15]
Audience Member #21: My next question is kind of nitpicking, but I’ve discussed it with my friends at some con. In “Assignment: Earth,” when Seven first comes onboard, Spock gives him the FSNP. It doesn’t work, then he is given the phaser stun, it does work. How does one work and not the other?
Dorothy Fontana: The phasers could be set on very hard stun, of course. The mechanical object generated much more power than even Spock himself. Physical strength.
Audience Member #22: I’d like to know, what was your reaction when you were dropped as Number One and taken to a smaller part?
Majel Barrett: Bitter.
Audience Member #22: And also, it’s said that Captain Kirk is somehow related to Horatio Hornblower. Are there any other characters that have their basis in other literary novels?
Dorothy Fontana: None that I can think of offhand. As you may or may not know, Captain Hornblower and Mr. Forester have long been favorites of Gene Roddenberry. And the essential premise of men alone, which the early English, well, any nations, warships and merchant ships in the sea, and the many perils that they then faced, are similar to what we proposed the Enterprise would be. In that sense, yes, Captain Kirk is descended from Hornblower. But he was really the only character that had that genesis.
Audience Member #22: How’d he come up with Spock?
Dorothy Fontana: Oh, Gene.
Audience Member #22: Yeah, how?
Dorothy Fontana: That’s really one for Gene. All I know is that Mr. Spock was always there, and it was always Leonard Nimoy. Always. From 1963 on. If I could expand on that for one moment, briefly. Leonard had appeared with Majel in a Lieutenant,[16] and he so favorably impressed Gene that he was the only actor that was ever considered for the part of Mr. Spock. Even when they wanted to recast, Gene held his ground. He’d recast anybody but Mr. Spock.
Majel Barrett: I think that Gene would agree that the character of Mr. Spock came out of Leonard rather than the other way around.
Dorothy Fontana: The final Mr. Spock.
Majel Barrett: Yeah.
Audience Member #23: I would like to know if you have thought about introducing Spock’s name, his full name?
Dorothy Fontana: No, because we’ve carried this myth through that you can’t pronounce it. I’d like to keep it, because it keeps him, that little part of him is an element of mystery and mystique that I think you really all like and you don’t want to know.
Audience Member #24: [Unintelligible].
Dorothy Fontana: No, not a phrase, it’s a matter of the tongue. There are a number of African tongues that the white man cannot pronounce, because of various syllables in them, which we are not trained to do. I believe what is called the click language, what is it...
Audience Member #24: It has an “X.”
Dorothy Fontana: Yeah, it has an “X” in it. It’s a language that the white man simply cannot pronounce, and that was actually the theory that I went on with the Vulcan language when I first used that line.
Majel Barrett: Wasn’t there also the idea that everybody on Vulcan began with an “S”?
Dorothy Fontana: We kind of got that along. As the Klingons all had “K” names, that just sort of evolved the same way. It was entirely followed. Xhosa, that was the African people I was thinking of.
Isaac Asimov: Due to time considerations and the fact that the Roddenberrys and D.C. Fontana have a dinner arrangement at six o’clock, this next question will be our last.
Dorothy Fontana: We can go on longer than that.
Majel Barrett: Sure we can, we don’t need—
Dorothy Fontana: We can go on longer than that, it’s only 25 past 5.
Audience Member #25: If the Enterprise is supposed to be like a community, with men and women, I wonder why there weren’t any children onboard? Because it seems like with all those people somebody would start a family.
Dorothy Fontana: We established, at least in background, that birth control devices were in use and in fact that probably most of the women in the service would have voluntarily taken some sort of at least temporary sterilization to prevent this. Going on the theory that if a woman really wanted a baby she should be out of the service and not in it because there were too many dangers in space to subject children.
Isaac Asimov: We’re going to have a small conference here. So just sit tight and we’ll tell you what’s happening.
[Inaudible conversation about how much longer the panel will go.]
Isaac Asimov: We have time for a short question.
Audience Member #26: Can you please tell me—what [do] the stardates mean?
Majel Barrett: Five numbers. There is no significance, they are just five numbers. As a matter of fact, many times we’ve used our birthdays.
Dorothy Fontana: Gene does explain this, incidentally, in The Making of Star Trek. It’s very elusive and I don’t understand one word of it. All we did was put four numbers, a decimal point, and another number because it was a device, just a gimmick.[17]
Program for the 1972 convention where Fontana & Barrett faced the fans (see highlighted item). Photo courtesy Bob Kobylak.
Audience Member #27: Is the Vulcan nerve pinch physically impossible?
Dorothy Fontana: I would think that it is, at least in part, because there are parts of the neck that you can paralyze someone, at least temporarily, if you know where to press. The pressure points.
Majel Barrett: One thing about childbearing on the spaceship that was never brought out. We did a show called “Who Mourns for Adonais?” and NBC wouldn’t let us film the original ending, which had Leslie Parrish as you know with “Adonais” and the leaves blowing and everything. He rapes her, makes love to her, whatever. And as they’re back on the ship, at the end of it, she comes in and says, “I’m pregnant.” So now you don’t know if it’s going to be a God or a woman. It was a lovely idea, but NBC said, “Nope! No sex on ship.”
[Audience boos.]
FACT TREK : A good story, but untrue. This ending was, in fact, filmed. Footage from this scene is on The Roddenberry Vault (2016).[18]
Audience Member #28: In view of the, at least my records maintain, some kind of racial balance on the ship [unintelligible]. Who was it that was responsible for the blatant chauvinism?
Fontana: The what?
Audience Member #28: The Chauvinism, which is quite blatant in the face of [unintelligible], and how did you feel playing a character who was in absolutely every respect so completely subservient to men?
Dorothy Fontana: Well, it was like this...I was on the show and Majel was on the show, but Gene Roddenberry was hearing [unintelligible]. No, he’s not a chauvinist, he’s a doll, but in the basic structure of things in most military organizations the males do carry the weight and carry the action. It’s almost dramatically necessary. It’s one of the reasons why we didn’t have the girls whopping people with karate chops and so on. The Romulan Commander was a woman, and we tried to use as many women in positions of strength and dignity as possible, but it wasn’t always possible, and we had no control over this.
FACT TREK: Yes, readers, it smack of a cop out to us, too...
Audience Member #29: What did Sarek see in Amanda?
Dorothy Fontana: Well, let me tell you this, this is what I saw in Amanda. And by Amanda, I mean Jane Wyatt. Ms. Wyatt is the only actor, who ever—
Audience Member #29: Actress.
Dorothy Fontana: Actor, actress, it’s the same thing. In ten years of writing, who ever walked up to me on the script, introduced herself to me and said, “I wanted to tell you how much I liked your script. I really enjoyed doing this part.” For me, this is a great lady, and I think that, in her, is what Sarek saw in Amanda.
Audience Member #30: What did Amanda see in Sarek?
Dorothy Fontana: Why don’t you ask some of the ladies in the audience? Sarek, as with most Vulcans, the mystique is a very charismatic man. And by man, I mean the male of the species, actually. He’s tall, he’s handsome, he’s strong, he’s dignified, he’s intelligent, and I can’t think of too much more that a woman would want. Actually, in the bedroom he’s probably sensual and sexual, more so than anyone on Earth, and why not?
Audience Member #31: How much smaller was the Enterprise than either the Klingon or the Romulan ships, as far as warp power goes?
Dorothy Fontana: We had to say that it was just about even, for the simple fact that if we didn’t, you leave yourself open to so many bad deals. For instance, in “The Enterprise Incident,” the Enterprise had to be trapped and surrounded by about five ships because you could shoot your way out of a ship-to-ship duel. Probably.
Audience Member #31: One more question. What was Spock—Leonard Nimoy—like offstage. Was he emotional or anything?
Dorothy Fontana: Leonard Nimoy was the guest star in the very first script I ever wrote, which was back in 1960 on The Tall Man.[19] That was a Western, he played a Deputy Sheriff. I’ve known Leonard that long. He was a beautiful person, not highly emotional in that he shows it. I think he is inside, he’s a deeply sensitive man, but he has a very quiet strength and dignity at all times that is very much like Spock as far as I know him.
Audience Member #32: When I read The Making of Star Trek, it said that all people from Vulcan—male, I believe—start with “SP” How come Sarek?[20]
Dorothy Fontana: That was a gag. It was really just a running joke in the memos. We did try to start the male names with “S” and they were only five letters long, and the women’s names were T apostrophe and then a number of letters, actually. It didn’t matter, because T’Pau was T-apostrophe-P-A-U, And T’Pring T-apostrophe-P-R-I-N-G. So the women did not follow as strict a form as the men’s names. It was just a pattern, a thing that we developed, and thought it was a nice gimmick and kept it.
Audience Member #32: How old was Mr. Spock?
Dorothy Fontana: Because of the fact that we didn’t feel our viewers could relate to anybody who was possibly a hundred years old or even seventy years old who looked like Leonard, we decided he was going to be what his Earth age really was, which was about thirty-six at the time.
Audience Member #33: In The Making of Star Trek, it says that Sulu was supposed to get one girl every single time that Spock or Kirk got five.[21] How come he never got one?
Dorothy Fontana: Oh, those inscrutable Orientals. Actually, I’m really sorry to George Takei, who’s a fine actor, but we never had an opportunity to give him the good strong roles that would have allowed that.
Audience Member #34: My question is really directed at Ms. Fontana, but first I have to complement Ms. Barrett on her performance. I had never seen the pilot film until I saw it here, and I just want to say that I thought your performance was just wonderful. I thought your capacity for leadership has never been matched by any man [unintelligible] the show.
Majel Barrett: Thank you.
Audience Member #34: [Unintelligible].
Majel Barrett: Unfortunately, NBC felt the same way and still felt that a man should run the ship, so...
Audience Member #35: If I could just direct my question to Ms. Fontana. I would like to know how she personally felt about the fact that women were so often kept in the background, and if she did try to do anything to get women more roles of strength and character. I’ve always wondered and I think that I have a right to know and so does every other female here. Just a question, just a question.
Dorothy Fontana: Alright. First of all, I am not a militant fem-lib.
[Interrupted by huge applause.]
Dorothy Fontana: Any respect or stature that I or Majel personally gained as women, we have done through our professions and felt that we did these things to the best of our abilities, as creative people. In writing, my own personal tendency in fact is not to write for women, but rather to write for men. I like men (laughs)—a lot.
[Interrupted by laughter and applause.]
Dorothy Fontana: But seriously, on an action adventure show, women simply do not have the opportunity to do as much as you might like them to do.
Audience Member #36: It’s supposed to be the future.
Dorothy Fontana: In the future, I still want to be a woman.
Audience Member #37: So do we all!
Dorothy Fontana: No, you can do it sometimes. I did a Big Valley for Barbara Stanwyck in which she was very strong. I did a High Chaparral for Linda Cristal where she was very strong. I try as often as possible, but sometimes a story just simply will not work with a woman.
FACT TREK : Oh, Dorothy...
Isaac Asimov: Again, we have reached the end of our time limit. I’m sorry, we’ll try to find time tomorrow to continue this. I can’t guarantee it, but thank you very much for being patient with us.
—30—
Read a contemporary account of the con by clicking on the vintage pages above to view them on the My Star Trek Scrapbook blog.
Special Thanks!
To Bill Kobylak for making these invaluable and rare recordings available for us to transcribe and publish here on FACT TREK. Listen to the original recording of this Fontana & Barrett session from 1972 here.
Bill also kindly provided the image of the Star Trek Lives! program’s listing of panels and speakers.
Revision History
2021-04-28
Original version
2021-11-17
Minor edits to fix punctuation and a few words.
End Notes & Sources
[1] Image source: Roddenberry on Facebook, Roddenberry Vault 230A/366 (link)
[2] Ellison on The Les Crane Show. We consulted a WGA Newsletter, historical TV listings, and fanzines and found reference to a pair of Harlan Ellison appearances on the syndicated version of The Les Crane Show about four years prior to this convention. In June of 1968, he appeared alongside Robert Bloch and Norman Spinrad to discuss the literary value of science fiction. In August of 1968, he appeared alongside Sheldon Leonard, George Kirgo, and Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible, Mannix) to discuss TV violence. Presumably, Ellison’s comments about Star Trek were made during one of these appearances. (If someone has a tape of either appearance, we’d love to see it.)
[3] “Balance of Terror” was the eighth regular episode produced in 1966 as part of the first season, on top of the two pilots produced in 1964 and 1965.
[4] The Star Trek Songbook was a three-issue fanzine, "A compendium of all the songs sung in episodes of Star Trek and some that weren't, along with scenes discussing Federation music." You can read about it on Fanlore, here. (link)
[5] What does NCC Stand for? Oft debated, but Star Trek Art Director Matt Jefferies explained its origins a number of times:
NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It’d been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be too expensive for any one country, so I mixed the U.S. and the Russian and came up with NCC.
Source:BBC Cult Site (c2007), Interview with Matt Jefferies. (link) [With typos corrected.]
[6] Zenna Henderson’s “The People.” Fontana could be referring to one of two collected anthologies of Zenna Henderson’s short stories about “The People” that were published prior to 1972, which were Pilgrimage: The Book of the People (1961) and The People: No Different Flesh (1967). Henderson was an American elementary school teacher and science fiction and fantasy author (link).
[7] Dangerous Visions & unintentional plagiarism. The Harlan Ellison passage referenced in the audience question appeared on pages 115-116 of the book Dangerous Visions (1967), as the first part of his introduction to “A Toy For Juliette” by Robert Bloch". It reads:
Ellison: Recently the story editor of a prime-time television series, pressed for a script to shoot, sat down and wrote one himself rather than wait for the vagaries of a free-lance scenarist’s schedule and dalliance. When he had completed the script, which was to go before the cameras in a matter of days, he sent it as a matter of form to the legal department of the studio. For the clearance of names, etc. Later that day the legal department called him back in a frenzy. Almost scene-for-scene and word-for-word (including the title), the non-s-f story editor had copied a well-known science fiction short story. When it was pointed out to him, the story editor blanched and recalled he had indeed read the story, some fifteen years before. Hurriedly, the story rights were purchased from the well-known fantasy writer who had originally conceived the idea. I hasten to add that I accept the veracity of the story editor when he swears he had no conscious knowledge of imitating the story. I believe him because this sort of unconscious plagiarism is commonplace in the world of the writer. It is inevitable that much of the mass of reading a writer does will stick with him somehow, in vague concepts, snatches of scenes, snippets of characterization, and it will turn up later, in the writer’s own work; altered, transmogrified, but still a direct result of another writer’s work. It is by no means “plagiarism.” It is part of the answer to the questions asked by idiots of authors at cocktail parties: “Where do you get your ideas?”
Of course, this is Ellison’s third-hand account of the event, which largely agrees with the historical record but some of the particulars—e.g. “the legal department called him back in a frenzy”—should not be taken literally.
[8] Heinlein & Plagiarism. According to Heinlein’s papers, Gene Coon called him on the telephone and requested a waiver for "Tribbles", which Heinlein granted—script unseen—a decision he later regretted after receiving the script and the subsequent marketing of the creatures copied from his 1952 book The Rolling Stones. We’ll be covering this in a future Fact Trek.
[9] Spock’s Parents. Fontana’s “This Side of Paradise” does in fact give the first details of Spock’s parentage, as he tells Kirk, “My mother was a teacher. My father an ambassador.” However, details about Spock’s parentage were previously hinted at in “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” In that second pilot episode, Spock tells Kirk, “The fact one of my ancestors married a human female—” before Kirk cuts him off with the line, “Terrible having bad blood like that.” And in “The Corbomite Maneuver,” the first regular episode to be filmed, the “ancestor” in question is identified as Spock’s father, when Spock tells Mr. Scott, regarding his mother, “She considered herself a very fortunate Earth woman.”
[10] The Romulan ship ships out. Fontana’s stated reason for the replacement of the bird of prey-adorned Romulan ship miniature with the then-new Klingon ship seems questionable. Claiming it was “not good” seems at odds with reality given the crap quality of the ion ship employed in “Spock’s Brain” and the simplicity of the Tholian ship. It’s worth noting that Fontana was no longer on staff at the point of “Incident,” but one can assume someone on the show told her to use the Klingon ship, since her earliest outline has the treaty and the use of the Klingon ship design in it (covered in more detail in our vintage Star Trek Fact Check piece linked here). That the fan mentions having heard that the Romulan ship was dropped by a prop man somewhat aligns with an utterly unverified story that Wah Chang destroyed the miniature himself.
[11] Babel aliens. UCLA, The Gene Roddenberry Star Trek Television Series Collection (1966-1969).
[12] Tiberius. David Gerrold has long tried to stake claim for Kirk’s middle name, saying in one 2014 interview:
We were at a Star Trek convention and somebody asked Dorothy and I what was Kirk’s middle name and I had just finished a book on Roman history and was still thinking Tiberius and so it popped out of my head, “Tiberius.” And the audience loved it, so later on when we were doing the animated show which was a few months later and we passed it in front of Gene and he said “OK” and that was about it. (Source).
And in an earlier interview, Gerrold made it clear this convention happened in 1973 (Source).
We’ve always found Gerrold’s account suspect. Consider the fact that Gary Lockwood’s character on Gene Roddenberry’s The Lieutenant (1963-64) was named William Tiberius Rice. Given all that, and With Fontana dropping the middle name at this event—in 1972, the first major convention dedicated specifically to Star Trek—Gerrold’s recollection doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
[13][14] Grace Lee Whitney’s contract. It called for her to appear in 7 out of the first 13 episodes and she was guaranteed $750 per episode for up to 4 days work per episode. UCLA, The Gene Roddenberry Star Trek Television Series Collection (1966-1969).
[15] Grace Lee’s Exit. She maintained she had been sexually assaulted by someone she identified only as “The Executive”, and believed that was the reason she was dropped at the end of her contract. Source: The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, by Grace Lee Whitney, with Jim Denney, Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press, Inc., 1998 (on Amazon here).
[16] Nimoy and Barrett appeared together in the episode "In The Highest Tradition," the 22nd episode of The Lieutenant, which first aired on February 29, 1964.
[17] Stardates. Here’s what Gene Roddenberry had to say on the subject in The Making of Star Trek (p.198-199) [book’s ALL CAPS SHOUTY TEXT here lowercased]:
In the beginning, I invented the term "star date" simply to keep from tying ourselves down to 2265 A.D., or should it be 2312 A.D.? I wanted us well in the future but without arguing approximately which century this or that would have been invented or superseded. When we began making episodes, we would use a star date such as 2317 one week, and then a week later when we made the next episode we would move the star date up to 2942, and so on. Unfortunately, however, the episodes are not aired in the same order in which we film them. So we began to get complaints from the viewers, asking, “How come one week the star date is 2891, the next week it's 2337, and then the week after it's 3414?"In answering these questions, I came up with the statement that “This time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel's speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to earth's time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three earth hours. the star date specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading." Therefore star date would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy.I’m not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I’ve been lucky again, and I'd just as soon forget the whole thing before I'm asked any further questions about it.
[18] Deleted Ending to “Who Mourns for Adonais?” On The Roddenberry Vault (home video release), disc 3, "Inside The Roddenberry Vault (Part Three)."
[19] Fontana’s First Script. We covered this in the article “Did D.C. Fontana Get Her First Professional Script Assignment on Star Trek? “Monday, March 13, 2017. Star Trek Fact Check blog. (link)
[20] Vulcan Proper Names. Bob Justman’s memo about Vulcan names, which features tongue-in-cheek suggestions such as “Spank,” “Spawk,” and “Spork,” was originally sent to Gene Roddenberry on May 3, 1966. UCLA, The Gene Roddenberry Star Trek Television Series Collection (1966-1969). The memo is reprinted in The Making of Star Trek (p.274-275).
[21] Sulu gets no love. As recounted by Gene Roddenberry in The Making of Star Trek (p.248-249) [book’s ALL CAPS SHOUTY TEXT here lowercased]:
It was from the Oriental Protective Association, which is like the NAACP. The letter firmly chastised us because these people had watched a number of the shows and had noticed it was the occidentals who always ended up with the girls. They threatened to boycott the show if we didn't give them a satisfactory answer.So, with George's permission, I wrote them back saying that our contract with Mr. Takei was based on the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1925 in which Japan got three battleships for every five that Great Britain and the United States got. I promised then that on that basis Mr. Takei would receive three girls for every five that Kirk and McCoy got. It must have seemed like a reasonable answer because we never heard from them again!
FACT TREK : {facepalm}
Your FACT TREKkers lunching with Dorothy Fontana June 2019. RIP, Dorothy.